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[Help] Improving HDD storage setup for personal server (lemmy.zip)
submitted 1 month ago by selfmate@lemmy.zip to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I want a server running nextcloud, immich and others.

I have a N100 mini server with a 2TB external HDD. I want to secure the system against data loss. Hence, I want a backup and redundancy.

  1. Most important question: How do I build everything? Is this a NAS? My naive approach is to buy 3 external HDDs and connect them to the N100 with a USB hub. I assume this is not "the right way" but to use/build a NAS. Do I have to build a separate NAS computer? When I lookup NAS buying, it is a computer with a case for 4 drives, excluding the drives and costs 400 bucks. I am confused because this is incredibly expensive compared to what I already have. What is the additional benefit compared to my setup? Am I cheap?

  2. Regarding redundancy, is RAID still the way to go? At 2 TB, using RAID 5 with 3 drives sounds good. I'd have 4 TB of usable space, much more than I intend to use in the next years, and adding a drive increases the storage by 2 TB, effectively increasing space by 50%.

  3. I have 4 TB usable space, but I won't reach 2 TB in the next one or two years. I'd use a 2 TB HDD for a local backup via borg. Once my hot storage needs to increase, I replace the backup drive with a larger one and use it to increase the RAID storage. Is one backup sufficient? Or should I keeping multiple versions of the data. Daily, weekly, monthly backups? What is your experience with it?

  4. Another 2 TB HDD for an offsite backup, LUKS encrypted, backed up once a year (that's the goal for now).

Does that sound good?

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[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Depends. If you are running it as a service that starts with the system (sudo sysemctl enable kopia should work with most install methods, as kopia comes with a systemd service you only need to enable) then yes, it will use its own scheduler.

If you want to use your own scheduling, you'd use anything that can execute a command on a schedule.

[-] selfmate@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 weeks ago

Thank you!

[-] selfmate@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 weeks ago

I couldn't find a systemd unit or service.

Kopia will then automatically begin taking the snapshot following the settings you set for the policy. link

I'm not yet sure about that

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

How did you install kopia? What system are you on?

I'm not yet sure about that

It needs to be running, if it is, it will follow the policy. Systemd can start it with the system, but you can also start it some other way. Or you can execute snapshots without it constantly running, via cron/script. It's up to you.

[-] selfmate@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago

It's a fedora server.

according to kopia's repo, there is no official systemd service https://github.com/kopia/kopia/issues/2685 and there is none on my system.

in the past week, it did not backup anything. Hence, there is no scheduler built into kopia automagically as described/ hinted in the docs.

I just wrote a systemd service and timer and I'll see if it works. I'm not the best in using systemd. I dislike it, I like cron for it's simplicity.

Even if it works then, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because info about the scheduler is rare and the docs do not even cover the topic.

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Sorry, I must've misremembered about systemd. It's how my installs start up, and the unit file is not in the usual location for systemd units I've created myself, so my assumption was it came with Kopia. There is no systemd timer though, and one isn't needed.

Edit: Just confirmed no systemd file came with kopia on my system either, my mistake.

in the past week, it did not backup anything. Hence, there is no scheduler built into kopia automagically as described/ hinted in the docs.

Was Kopia running during that time?

If you run a Kopia command, then it will perform the instructed task, and then exit. It will obviously not do anything after completing whatever command was given, as the process will have exited, leaving no kopia process running on the system. This is for when you use it in cron or your own scripts.

The other way of doing things is to run it in server mode kopia server start, which will set it running as a background daemon. When running, it allows you to log into the web interface or configure it via cli to do whatever you like. And as long as the process starts along with the host system, that's all there is to it.

How the daemon is set up to start, doesn't really matter.

[-] selfmate@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

all good. thanks for exchanging our experience :)

kopia wasn't running durin the week. I didn't look into the server configuration since it introduces user handling and that seemed to be overkill for the task but running as daemon would lead to a funcitoning system of course.

this is my kopia.service file in case some else finds it and is interested in it

[Unit]

Description=kopia backup

[Service]

User=root ExecStart=$HOME/bin/backup_kopia

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

where $HOME/bin/backup_kopia contains

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/kopia repository connect filesystem --path $KOPIA_REPO --password $KOPIA_PASSWORD

/usr/bin/kopia snapshot create $HOME/folder_to_backup

and my kopia.timer

[Unit]

Description=Run kopia backup

[Timer]

OnCalendar=hourly

Persistent=true

[Install]

WantedBy=timers.target

[-] selfmate@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago

the backup is working

this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
52 points (98.1% liked)

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